Dreaming
by bendingwind
Summary: Real life never ends with 'happily ever after', but Clint will take what he can get. It takes them a little while to get there. Fix-It, References to movie events. Clint/Coulson


He started the morning in Phil's obscenely comfortable bed, trying to camouflage himself against the sheets well enough for Phil to forget about him and let him get some sleep. It took a few kisses to convince him that that wasn't gonna happen, and a few more plus the promise of coffee and bacon to get him out of bed. Phil was relaxed; this was a part of their routine and Phil had not-so-stealthily inched up the start to his morning to make allowances. The coffee had been awesome, the bacon only slightly burned, and Clint had decided that cinnamon toast was absolutely necessary to his continued existence. It said a lot about their time together that Phil now kept his pantry well-stocked with assorted Weird Things Clint Was Likely To Want For Breakfast.

He'd thought, throwing a bemused smile at Phil over Phil's bowl of super-healthy-slash-super-gross vegan cereal, that he'd like to spend every morning for the rest of his life just like this.

Phil had given him a quick kiss just inside the door and they headed off for the day, Phil to drive his plain silver car to SHIELD headquarters and Clint to catch a bus.

Must have been goddamned karma or a jinx or something, because the day went to shit from there.

* * *

It was an accident, actually, the discovery of Phil Coulson: Alien Agent. There were shape-shifting aliens stirring up shit on the West Coast, so Reed and Tony were not-so-subtly competing to see who could build the best shape-shifter detector in the shortest amount of time.

And Tony pointed his at Phil.

At first, everyone had just stared. Phil had looked down at his hands, grimaced, and frowned with deep disapproval at Tony.

"Your 'alien detector' seems to have turned me into one," Phil said, evenly. Clint was completely prepared for this, he'd been preparing for this for his_entire life,_ he had so many jokes just for—

"Arrest him," Natasha had said, deadpan.

Clint had rolled his eyes at Natasha's joke and opened his mouth to spit out a wise-crack at the junior agents who stepped forward to _actually obey her orders_ because they were so green they didn't know a joke when they heard one—

And then Phil had punched the nose of the younger agent into his skull with a thick, dull crunch that Clint had heard a dozen times before. The other agent, a kid who had to be barely out of college, leapt back, and Natasha moved in with a speed even Clint's well-adjusted eyes couldn't follow. For half a second the only thing that existed in the world was the meaty sound of flesh hitting flesh, and then there was a yelp and another crack of breaking bone. And then they weren't moving anymore, and Phil was in a headlock with an arm that looked pretty damn broken.

Clint's mouth was still open, his joke still on the tip of his tongue.

Natasha waved the surviving junior agent closer. She came, stepping over the bloody body of her dead friend, and fastened restraints around Phil's wrists with visibly trembling hands.

They were on the uppermost level of SHEILD, and there was a window. The light streamed through, casting golden shadows on Phil's face, and Clint wondered how long it would be before Phil woke him up from this particular nightmare.

"I killed a suspected spy a few months ago in Hungary," Natasha said, as she heaved the thing to its feet. Its face, too much like Phil's if Phil had green skin and a weird bumpy chin, contorted in a grimace of pain. "When his heart stopped beating, he reverted to a form very similar to this. I have been investigating under Director Fury's orders, and I think, gentlemen, that this is a good indication that we have a full-scale invasion on our hands."

Moments like this held a sort of crystal-clarity in Clint's mind, the way the day-to-day shuffling from place to place completely eluded him.

He half-remembered Cap insisting that they inform Fury, at once, and sort of hauling him along to the debriefing room. He found himself seated around the large, circular table (Phil had nudged him and grinned when Fury had said, "This damn round table does not make you my fucking knights. There is no equality in this institution, there are _orders._") with Cap and Fury arguing on the other side.

"He's one of my men, and I am _going_ to save him," Cap insisted, all innocent superboy charm. Fury looked pretty damn unimpressed, which would have been funnier if Clint didn't feel quite so numb.

He took a deep breath. Any minute, Phil would wake him with a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss and complain that Clint kicked when he had nightmares, and then ask what he'd been dreaming of. And Clint would smile and lean into the kiss and say, _Nothing._

"We're at a huge disadvantage as it is, Captain Rogers," Fury said. "I'm _not _gonna let whatever the fuck we're dealing with here know that _we_ know, just to stage some damn fool rescue mission for an agent who is probably already dead. Agent Coulson would be the first man to say that you're all acting like you've got your heads up your asses."

The glare Fury leveled at Cap would have caused a lesser superhero to flinch. Instead, Cap stood straight and his eyes flashed, like something out of one of the novels Phil liked.

"All due respect, sir, but I didn't ask how Agent Coulson would feel about it. I am going after him."

They glared at each other across the table as Clint watched with a sort of tingling horror. Phil had been fine this morning, better than fine, perfect—and now, suddenly he'd been in danger for maybe even dead for _months _and Clint hadn't known.

He still hadn't woken up.

"We have to face the possibility that we fucked up and Agent Coulson has been an inside agent for these aliens since the beginning of his association with SHIELD," Fury insists, glaring across the table, "or was replaced by one sometime after we recruited him."

All the times Phil could have died, probably _should _have, flashed across Clint's memory like some sort of nightmare reel.

Fury and Cap were still arguing—"very real possibility that the human Philip Coulson is dead. A rescue mission is obviously out of the question, Captain, and I'd appreciate it if you'd shut the fuck up and follow orders."

"You and I both know that's not going to happen, Director," Cap said, leveling a more powerful level of serious stare at Fury.

"I don't think you can actually stop us," Tony butted in, from his seat beside Cap. "I, for one, think my life would be totally incomplete without someone to threaten me with tasers and Supernanny, and I'll fly Cap out there whether we have your permission or not."

"You always were a shit team player, Stark," Fury bit out. Tony threw his arms up in a manner that, on anyone else, might have been a dramatic, innocent shrug.

"Hey, I'm totally a team player, look at me assembling a team. Hey, Natasha, wanna come with? See? I'm just not very good at being _your _team player."

On the other side of Fury, Natasha was surveying Clint with a strange look in her eyes. When he met her gaze, she looked away and stood.

"Iron Man, the Captain and I will take a jet and scan for Agent Coulson's SHIELD-issue tracking system in the area immediately surrounding the base where I took out the first alien. Stealth will be key; I think it's best if Hulk remains behind and Iron Man, barring serious complication, remains in the jet," she declared.

At the insinuation that he wouldn't be _right damn there next to them _looking for Phil, something seemed to snap inside him, and the world moved from blurred and sort of unreal to sharp and focused.

"I'm going too," he informed her, with a glare daring her to argue. She met him with the cool, level gaze she did so well.

"You are not. I'm benching you for this mission."

"You don't have the right—" he started, because years of partnership did not mean she got to boss him around when his—when _Phil's_ life was in danger.

"I don't, but you've been sleeping with Coulson for six months, and I think the rest of the team will agree that your feelings would cause you to be a liability to this mission." Her voice was as sharp and precise as he had ever heard it, and he fought back the desire to flinch.

"Is that true?" Fury asked, directing his glare straight at Clint. Clint… couldn't bring himself to lie about loving a man who was probably (_God_) dead, and may have been dead since long before he'd had the chance to meet Clint. Was he in love with an alien infiltrator, then? Did it still count, if Phil had been an alien set on conquering earth all along, and did it count if it had only been the alien for a little while?

He was going to give himself a damn migraine or possibly jump off a tall building if he didn't get off his ass and _do_ something.

"I want to go, sir," he bit out.

Fury stared at him across the table for what felt like a thousand fucking years. Even one eye down, the man had a serious Stare.

"Hell no, Barton. Consider yourself benched. I'm sure Miss Lewis can find you some paperwork on inter-office relationships to fill out while you wait."

"With all due respect, sir—"

"You haven't respected me a day in your goddamn life, Barton, don't start now. You heard me; you're benched until further notice. Get out of my sight, I don't want you hearing any specifics and trying some damn fool thing like following them."

Clint considered it, briefly, but at heart he was pretty practical; the jets were too small to sneak aboard without detection and unless he could figure out how to fly really fast, he had no chance in hell of following them. He pulled himself to his feet and stood there for a moment, shaking hands gripping the table like it might anchor him in place.

Fury cleared his throat, pointedly, and Clint left the room. The door banged shut behind him in a way that sounded unusually loud, and he wondered if he'd slammed it accidentally.

Half an hour and a few very worn-down floor tiles later, the team emerged. Bruce shot him a worried, pitying look before taking off in the direction of his lab, a sheet of paper Clint recognized as a biological sample requisition form in his hands. Tony clapped him on the shoulder and favored him with his patented apologetic eyes, and Steve actually _hugged _him, what the fuck. The desire to hug back and find comfort in Steve's embrace was more embarrassing than the actual hug. Fury didn't acknowledge him at all, and Natasha—

Natasha sighed and squeezed his arm gently.

"If he can be brought back, Clint, I'll bring him back for you," she promised, and something hard and painful squeezed around the hollow in his chest. It felt like drowning.

"Thanks," he said, and was surprised to hear his own voice come out as a whisper.

She nodded at him, once, and followed Steve and Tony down the corridor at a brisk pace. For a moment Clint was seized with the urge to follow them and _beg _them to take him along, but they turned the corner and the urge disappeared. He leaned back against the wall and sunk, quietly, onto the floor.

He probably lost some time there, because the next thing he was aware of, his stomach was signaling that he was fucking starving, that cinnamon toast (and Phil's warm, friendly kitchen, could that have been just this morning?) had been an age ago.

He pulled himself to his feet, slow with exhaustion. He'd fought fucking battles and felt less tired than a morning of sitting around and talking had left him, he thought. He felt… _lost,_ as he made his way through corridors that were as familiar to him as the back of his hand, down to the SHEILD cafeteria. The food was shit, but it was good old-fashioned American shit, and Clint could keep anything down.

The room died down to whispers as he walked in. For a moment he wondered, irrationally, how the word had spread so quickly that he'd been sleeping with his former handler.

He caught the barest hint of someone on the other side of the room whispering, "Why isn't he with the others looking for Agent Coulson?"

He walked up to the food lady, the same one who'd been there ever since he'd been recruited, and took the food she slopped onto his tray. There was a table with an empty corner halfway across the room; he made a beeline for it and watched as the agents on the other end stuffed what they could into their mouths and scrambled away.

Chatter slowly resumed, and from another table, he heard; "Man, Coulson was his handler for _years,_ I can't believe he's just sitting there eating lunch. If it were me, I'd be tearing things up looking for my partner."

Clint hung his head and took another bite of his food.

"I heard Agent Coulson was dead," another person said, "The alien killed him before it took his place, and _no one even noticed the switch._ You guys would notice if I got switched out for an evil invading alien, right?" There was fear in the young voice, and Clint wanted to punch him, beat the innocence and naiveté straight out of the kid. Of course they wouldn't notice, that was the mark of a good infiltrator, they _couldn't _notice—unless, of course, they did.

He set his fork down, stood, and left the cafeteria. As he passed through the doors he heard someone behind him say, "They're keeping it in Detention Block Eleven, isolated from other prisoners, for interrogation. No access, but I bet—"

And, just like that, Clint had something he could do to help whatever might be left of Phil.

The detention cells are an area of SHIELD with which he is intimately familiar. With Natasha and Phil, he was one third of the best interrogation team SHIELD had. Was, past tense. He gritted his teeth and kept moving.

Sharon, the pretty guard on duty, let him in without much fuss. Clearly Fury hadn't thought to block off his access to the prisoner. It was sitting in a cell halfway down Block Eleven, behind laser bars that must have come straight out of Star Wars, still looking too much like Phil if Phil had green skin and barnacles growing out of his face.

"What are you?" Clint blurted out, all finesse lost the instant he saw that too-wrong face. He probably should have asked another question first, gone for a better interrogation strategy, since apparently this was all he was going to be allowed to do to help Phil, but—he'd _fucked _this thing.

God, he'd fucked an alien, and he'd _loved every minute of it._

"I am Agent Philip Coulson of SHIELD," the thing informed him in the iron tones Phil always assumed when he repeated the default mantra of a captured SHIELD agent. "I believe I have been betrayed by Agent Natasha Romanoff, also known as Black Widow, in a set-up designed to frame me as an invading alien in disguise. I recently recovered information indicating that she may be operating as a double agent for HYDRA. I would like to speak to Director Fury… please."

Clint glared at it. Whatever it was, it looked painfully composed as it sat there, wrists crossed neatly in its lap so that the restraints wouldn't chafe.

"Whatever you are, you aren't Phil," Clint growled, angry now. As if he didn't know Natasha better than that.

"I am Agent Philip Coulson of SHIELD," the alien repeated, and Clint turned to leave. He could—he could watch from the observation room, give advice, or something, because clearly he wasn't doing any good here.

"_Please,_ Clint," it said, and he froze. "Please, I need you to… to trust me."

Clint walked out and let the door fall shut behind him. He rested his forehead against the cool wall, shut his eyes, and finally allowed himself to cry.

He managed to gather himself together just in time to avoid awkward questions as a team of interrogators arrived. They looked young and unweathered, and he wondered wearily whether he had ever looked that way.

"Always knew there was something off about Coulson," one of them mutters to the other as they pass through the doors, and Clint should have won a fucking _award_ for restraining himself from punching the kid's light out. He left the detention center.

Natasha found him later, sitting on the worn leather sofa in Phil's office. He knew the answer before she had a chance to open her mouth, but she sat down beside him and told him anyway.

"There isn't any sign of him, Clint, I… I'm sorry. The agent has been in place for months at least, maybe even… maybe years."

He nodded, numb once again, and Natasha reached out to run a gentle finger under his eye.

"You're crying," she said, sounding almost surprised. "I thought—"

And Clint could only shake his head, unable to meet her eyes.

"I see. He's been declared KIA. I will... I'll deal with the arrangements."

Clint nodded, still unable to make his mouth move or his vocal cords work. It just seemed like so much effort, and he was so _tired._

"Come on," Natasha said, very quietly, as she pulled him to his feet. "You'll spend the night at my place. We can work things out tomorrow."

He fell asleep with Natasha curled around him and wondered how he was supposed to keep living, let alone being Hawkeye: the Avenger, without Phil there to sleep by his side every night.

* * *

Natasha never broke her promises, and she didn't break this one; she arranged everything. She kept Clint more or less sequestered away in her apartment for the few days it took to arrange Phil's funeral. It was a quiet affair, military, and it took place on a breezy fall morning as golden leaves floated around them. Very poetic, Phil would have liked it.

The grave was empty.

After, Natasha took his arm and tried to steer him away from the others before they had a chance to pounce, but Fury was clearly onto her, as he made a beeline straight for Clint.

"You've got another week," he announced, cutting them off from the somber line of cars, "And then I expect you back. Is that going to be a problem?"

Natasha made a noise like she might protest, but Clint cut her off.

"No, sir,"

She leveled a look at him, and he shrugged. He wanted—_needed_ to be back at work. It hadn't taken long to discover that he needed to be functioning, doing things, because otherwise all he could do was sit there and remember life with a man who may have not even existed. And, more than anything, Clint needed access to the alien. He needed to know how much of it had been real, and how much had just been a fabrication, and there was only one person who could tell him.

And maybe… maybe it had been the alien all along. Maybe the man he loved wasn't dead, but sitting in a detention cell in SHIELD, waiting for another round of interrogation. The thought was terrifying and sickening and thrilling, all at once, and Clint almost itched with the desire to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

Clint hadn't finished assessing just how fucked up this situation was, but he knew one thing; if that alien was even a bit the man he loved, he was worth saving. It was the right thing to do; he knew it because even the thought of it made some of the weariness slough away, let him feel like maybe it was worth living after all, and that was all the moral compass Clint had ever needed.

Natasha led him away before Tony's "Hey, _hey,_ did Coulson watch Supernanny in the sack because I've been wondering—" could catch up with them. They were a team and all, but sometimes Clint just wanted to shoot his teammates.

He didn't wait a week. The next morning, he slipped into the passenger seat of Natasha's car, stared her down for a second, and the two of them went to work. They met in the debriefing room to discuss the alien threat and formulate strategy, and Clint knew he was mostly useless, but Fury wouldn't expect anything different and he couldn't tear his mind away from the thought of the alien sitting downstairs, hands folded neatly in his lap, eerily familiar green face carefully composed. He slipped out the moment the meeting was adjourned, apparently still benched from fighting, and made his way to the detention center.

The alien was still sitting there, composed, and it offered him a tentative smile when he pulled a chair up in front of its cage.

"It's nice to see you, Clint," it said, slowly. "I was worried."

"Yeah?" Clint asked, raising an eyebrow. It could be lying. He wanted to believe that it wasn't, but—well, it was an invading alien.

"They told me that my funeral was yesterday," it answered, wryly. "It's not every day, I suppose, that one gets notice of one's own funeral."

"No, I guess not."

"You look tired, and I can tell you haven't been eating. I haven't seen you like this since Moscow," it continued, disapproval mixing with concern and coating every word. He was too used to hearing that same tone from Phil, and he couldn't stop himself from leaning away.

"I can take care of myself."

The alien, as if to counter his movement, leaned forward.

"Clint, please, I need you to trust me. I understand why it's hard, since I look like—like _this_—but please, anything. Ask me, whatever you want, anything that only I could know."

Clint didn't ask, that day, though he stayed and spoke to it for nearly two hours, nominally trying to gain more information about the potential invasion. Mostly he just desperately needed to know where the Phil he loved left off and where this… thing… picked up.

His leave of absence sped by, and by the end of the week he was back in the field. Fury liked to force his agents to hit the ground running; he spent three weeks in Hungary sniffing out leads with Natasha, and two weeks after that following the trail of a suspected shape-shifter. It was surprisingly less composed than the alien that had been Phil when they captured it, and they learned at least the name of the aliens invading their planet; the Skrull.

They were extracted the day after, and Clint went immediately from the helipad to the detention block.

"So, I finally got my question answered," he announced, once again pulling a chair up in front of his alien. "You're a skrull."

It gave him a flat look, for just a moment, and then glanced away.

"Alright, yes," it admitted, "I'm sorry. We're not an invasion, we're just here to… there aren't many of us left, we just wanted a place to, to finish out our lives, as it were. I didn't lie, exactly; I _am _Phil Coulson. I just changed my face around a bit. I'm still… I'm still _me,_ Clint, and you have to trust me; Natasha is a traitor."

"Nice try," Clint ground out. "I've known Natasha a damn sight longer than I've known you, and she's never lied to me once since we became partners, which is more than I can say for you."

"I didn't lie," it repeated.

"Damn well feels like it," someone shouted, and after a moment Clint realized that it was him; he had risen to his feet and was towering over the alien, sheltered behind its laser bars. It stared up at him, more sad that Clint had ever seen that almost-familiar, composed face before.

"I am... I'm sorry, Clint," it said, hanging its head. "I didn't feel that I had a choice."

Clint wasn't sure what to say in the face of its apology, and he never figured it out; Natasha slid into the room and frowned at him.

"Did you know you technically don't have clearance to be in here? Come on, we've been called out again."

Clint shrugged at the alien and followed her away.

He didn't get breaks often, as surveillance turned into skirmishes turned into outright war, but sometimes he would find his way down to the detention block to talk to not-Phil, who did his utmost to convince Clint that he was a real boy.

Some days (most days) Clint left with hope allowing him to half-believe the words not-Phil said to him, but then he'd have to fight off another hoard of skrull, and he'd remember that it was all make-believe. A dream he'd had, never real, and the only thing that hadn't been a nightmare at all.

He had far too much love and the only object for him to bestow it on was a skrull who may or may not have been the person he fell in love with, and in any case was the enemy.

Sometimes, when he was falling asleep at night in the SHIELD-issue apartment he'd moved into after Phil's comfortable bed in his comfortable apartment had been sold in an estate sale, he wondered if after the war they'd leave the skrull down there for him to talk to, when he needed to just… when he needed to hear Phil's voice and feel like he hadn't lost everything. And then he turned over and buried his head in his pillow in shame, and willed himself to fall asleep. It never came easy.

And then, one day, the war was over, and Iron Man and Captain America brought back the people the skrulls had replaced, stored safely in green stasis pods. Phil had been in his for eleven months. He must have been taken weeks or even days before Clint and he had... well.

Clint sat by his sterile hospital bed and snapped at the nurses and demanded updates from the doctors until Natasha came in and chased him away, and then he took the lifts down to the detention block for the final time.

"I hear you found the real Philip Coulson," the skrull said, with a voice and a cruel smirk that were entirely new. "I feel quite foolish for having spent so much time trying to convince you that I was innocent and that you should free me."

"You think I'm really stupid, don't you?" Clint asked, after a while. The skrull tilted its head again, still smiling its cruel smile.

"Yes," it answered. "So stupid, and so easy to fool. The first rule of infiltration; change the relationships with the people closest to the human you are emulating. You never wondered or asked or considered why a man who had never so much as given you an appreciative look was suddenly in love with you? All my slip-ups and failures, you dismissed as being due to the change in our relationship. You even made excuses for me to your pretty little assassin friend, when she came asking questions. You made it so very easy for me, Clint Barton, because you're still just a sad little circus boy SHEILD picked up for his brawn rather than his brains."

Clint sucked in a breath. The insults were nothing; he'd heard worse and honestly, they were probably true. Even so, to hear so bluntly that none of it had been real, those ridiculously perfect six months where Phil had loved him and he had loved Phil, that it was all designed to keep him from asking too many questions, was nearly more than he could bear.

But Phil was _alive,_ and likely to remain that way, and Clint was willing to trade any level of heartbreak on his part just to see Phil scowling at him over paperwork every day.

"I'm not sorry for any of it," Clint said, quietly, and he spoke to himself as much as to the skrull. "I'm not sorry about… whatever it was that you made me think I had. He's fine, he's safe, and you're going to be locked away down here until they forget to stop the mad scientists in R&D from taking you away to cut you open and study you, and me? I'm going to be up there, by his side, watching his back like I always have."

"He won't love you," the skrull snarled. "When you watch his back, you think of me, reaming your tight ass and fingering you till you came from that alone, yeah? And I'll be _long dead_ before you forget what I made you think you had."

Clint nodded, and left, back to the hospital block to wear a hole in the floor outside Phil's room and maybe snap at some nurses and a doctor or two.

When Phil opened his eyes two days later to find Clint disheveled and sleep-deprived, sitting by his bedside, his eyes held none of the familiar warmth Clint had come to count on when he had thought they were together, just the bland curiosity Phil had always shown as his handler.

"Welcome back, Agent Coulson," he said with a smile.


End file.
